Star Wars Trilogy Posters by Tyler Stout (Mondo/Alamo Drafthouse)

February 3, 2011

These posters were the final entries in the Star Wars series by Mondo/Alamo Drafthouse. I’ve talked about a couple of their pieces before (Jabba’s Palace by Tom Whalen and Salacious Crumb by Rhys Cooper), so I’d like to touch on these as well. It might be a bit of a stretch to classify these as Jabba collectibles, but Jabba and his cronies are featured prominently on the Return of the Jedi poster, and I can’t really talk about that one with out talking about all of them.

These are the regular editions. They made 850 of each of these, and also made 250 variant editions using metallic inks for a more monochromatic look. If you haven’t seen these before, I suggest that you click on the thumbnails above for a closer look. Stout’s signature style is to cram as much detail as possible into each poster, and to some people that makes these look busy. But he does such a good job on the composition that I don’t think it’s an issue at all, especially when you see them at full size (24 x 36). On the contrary, I love all the little details, like Greedo peeking out between Tarkin and a Sandtrooper in the shot below. (The shots above and the detail shots below are from thesepages on UGO.com.)

Unlike the previous entries in the series, there was a lot of publicity about these and the Olly Moss prints that preceded them, which meant that it was very difficult to actually buy these. I thought I had bought a set of the Moss prints only to find out the next day that they had oversold and that my order had been canceled. With these, I managed to get a set by vigilantly monitoring the Mondo site and their Twitter feed. Even though I was right there when they went up for sale, I only just managed to get them, as they sold out in two or three minutes. Immediately afterward, these sets were selling for over $1000 on ebay.

From what I understand, Stout uses a combination of “tracing” using Adobe Illustrator and freehand drawing. However he does it, the likenesses are amazing, and I love the line drawing style he uses. It looks to me like he did a lot of original design for Jabba, since this isn’t a perfect match for his look from the film. It’s a bit more of an animated style. In any case, it’s well done. In the body of the poster, you can see Jabba, Salacious Crumb, Bib Fortuna,a Gamorrean Guard, Slave Leia and the Sarlacc, as well as his sail barge and palace. There’s also Leia as Boushh and Lando in his skiff guard disguise in boxes at the top of the poster. The only thing missing that I really think should have been in there is the Rancor.

I have these displayed over the mantle in my office and I think they look great. I have them paired with my Sideshow Darth Vader and Obi-wan Kenobi PFs, partially because they are emblematic of the entire trilogy and go well with the posters, and partially because I don’t have any other good place to put them. 😀